Adventure Gamers - Forums

zane - 02 May 2013 03:36 AM

millenia - 02 May 2013 02:52 AM

Oh no, there is no terrible puzzle anywhere. Gray Matter is a great example of puzzles done right.

okay i must say.. i really like gray matter for a number of reasons… buuuut.. it practically doesnt even have puzzles. 90% of its “puzzles” are “have you looked at everything in the room? Then you can advance” And the magician puzzles had a bunch of potential, which they didnt use at all. All you do is follow the recipe for the trick.. no puzzle thinking required.

Yes the magical puzzles were too easy, but still they weren’t exactly bad. I remember actually solving the riddles and using items and things like that in the game, not just wandering around clicking everything. IMO Jensen games have always provided us with great puzzles. Maybe this wasn’t Le Serpent Rouge but I definitely enjoyed GM’s gameplay. I have actually played games that have no puzzles (Dear Esther), practically no puzzles as there is so little to do (15 Days), very few puzzles with the emphasis on dialogue (Culpa Innata) etc. I wonder what kind of puzzles you mean as GM certainly does have puzzles.

I wasn’t a fan of the Daedalus Club puzzle either, but that had more to do with it not being my cup of tea than with it being a bad puzzle to begin with.
The magic tricks could’ve used a bit more work (like not making the recipe that obvious to follow, or including a variety of ‘red herring’ recipes), but they weren’t jarring.
The same with the cutscenes. They may not be to everyone’s liking, but that’s the style they chose.

A lot of these things are ‘cons’ or ‘issues’, but none of them are game-breaking deals. If you don’t like the Daedalus puzzle, don’t like the magic tricks and don’t like the cutscenes, then there’s still absolutely no reason why you won’t like the entire game, imo.

nomadsoul - 02 May 2013 04:16 AM

Luna Sevithiainen - 29 April 2013 07:31 AM

Gray Matter definitely had a nice story, atmosphere, like already mentioned. However, the thing bugging me (as a neuroscientist) were some inaccuracies, as well as the somewhat simplistic way of addressing it and the ‘oooooh braaaains’-feel (although that last part could also be because of my work).

Could you tell me if in real life too, the massa intermedia thing is true,that
it cotains some dormant neurons and some people have it and others don’t. How far scientists have reched in tapping what it does??

I was unaware of this aspect before so it was nice of JJ to tread in this field and
fictionalize it.

It is true that the massa intermedia is present in some people but not in all. However, from what I know it is more often present than not. Also, it is more often present in women than in men, and is also seen often in other mammals. Given that it is so common, I am having my doubts about the function JJ attributes to it. Or the world would be very interesting.
As to the function: I am not specialised in the thalamus and massa intermedia, but as far as I know, scientists haven’t found a specific function for it. There are nerve cells there, but their function? My best bet would be that it helps the thalami in processing (which would be communication between the lower, more basal brain structures and the higher brain structures), but no extra function as JJ attributes to it.

I agree with you, it’s nice that JJ put this into fiction, but I just don’t see how it can have the function she attributed to it. Also because I think the whole static thing is more a bodily response than something coming solely from the brain.

However, the thing I was most bugged by were the MRI scanners.
- The MRI scanners I know don’t look fancy like that. They are a tube. If you’re claustrophobic you don’t want to be in there, because they are rather small tubes.
- You don’t want to wear glasses, necklaces or any other metal when in there, because basically, the scanner contains a giant magnet and any metal will immediately be pulled towards it.
- In line with that, you usually have a magnetically shielded room around one MRI scanner, within that you can’t enter with metal or the metal is pulled towards the magnet. I am missing those rooms, so if safety inspection ever shows up, someone is in big trouble. Which he would already be with all the (metal!) equipment like computers etc. that close to a non-shielded MRI scanner. Also, with this set up I would expect major distortions on all images coming from all the magnets of the non-shielded surrounding scanners.
- I am having serious doubts about MRI scanners being able to measure activity from the massa intermedia, because the resolution is good, but far from perfect, and the massa intermedia is very small. Unless you had a very big-ass magnet, but that is unlikely given all the metal around.
- Those things are expensive. The institute I work has three scanners, and that is really a lot. I don’t think someone would have, what was it, seven or so in his basement. I wonder how he pays for all the liquid helium required to keep the magnets on their fields.
- One MRI scanners makes a whole lot of noise. Two even more. I don’t even want to think about the ear damage you get from being in a room with seven scanning non-shielded MRI scanners.

Really, if scanners like this existed, any neuroscience institute would be dying to have a dozen of them.

Concerning which system to get…....

The only MAYBE localization for the 3DS is “Ace Attorney 5” BUT the previous Ace Attorney game was not localized and Ace Attorney VS Prof Layton was not also localized at all. So - I would not predict anything right now for future 3DS adventure game releases. A 3DS will play DS adventure games however and that is a big plus.

The VITA is perfect for adventure games and Sony is courting indie developers which do make quite a few (and very good) adventure games. “Virtue’s Last Reward” on the VITA can only be described as an amazing experience.

The Netbook surprised me. I bought a total of 20 adventure games at half price books and they all ran just fine and look great. None of them broke the bank for price either.

In the future I definitively get newer and more powerful netbooks - it is my favorite on the go system. I hope my Future is filled with more adventure games like Gray Matter, Walking Dead, Book of Shadows and Virtue’s Last Reward.

For the money - the winner is the Netbook and Gray Matter - Gray Matter is one of the best adventure games I’ve played since the first Gabriel Knight release.